Colonialism, Independence and Underdevelopment in Africa

[Pages:25]Master program in African Studies The Dynamics of African Societies Portfolio

Colonialism, Independence and Underdevelopment in Africa

The Pre-eminence and Blame Game

By Princewill Dimkpa

African Studies University of Dalarna

2015-03-24

Teacher: Lars Berge

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 3 1.1. The Invention of Africa and Africans ..................................................................................... 4 1.2. Who are the African People? .................................................................................................. 6 1.3. The scramble for Africa .......................................................................................................... 7 1.4. Reasons for the scramble for Africa ...................................................................................... 9 1.5. South Africa and the scramble for Africa ............................................................................ 11 1.6. Effects of the scramble for Africa........................................................................................ 12 2. Colonization in Africa .......................................................................................................... 15 2.1. Decolonization and Independence in Africa ........................................................................ 17 3. Underdevelopment in Africa................................................................................................ 19 3.1. Causes of Underdevelopment in Africa ............................................................................... 21 3.2. The Way Forward for Africa ............................................................................................... 22 3.3. References............................................................................................................................ 24

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1. Introduction

The ethnic and cultural diversity of Africa as a continent cannot be overemphasized even as the available literatures today cannot contain and agree on all parts of her history. Although classic scholars such as John Illife, Walter Rodney, Fanon Frantz and Mahmood Mamdani have written about Africa's historical events from different perspectives, but speculations of other schools of thought still call for discussion. Africa being the second largest and most populous continent in the world is about 12 million square miles which harbours 1.1 billion people and covers six percent of the Earth's total area (Sayre, 1999). This massive continent currently consists of 54 countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Somalia, and Tanzania etc.

The colonization of Africa spanned for decades of years (1800-1960) after which independence prevailed in the continent. Today, after over fifty years of independence for some African countries, poverty, hunger, disease and corruption have become their next door neighbours. As an African, it is sad to see how the global image of Africa today depicts starvation, epidemic and underdevelopment even as most countries in the continent are barely managing to exist and at the verge of collapsing. Given all these plights on the continent of Africa, some scholars such as Rodney (1972) and Fanon (1961) argue that these are the effects of colonialism, whereas other Eurocentric scholars such as (Gann and Duignan, 1975) think it is a result of Africa's lack of political, economic and organizational abilities to transform the continent.

The aim of this portfolio is to discuss three critical issues of present day Africa. These issues are colonialism, independence, and underdevelopment. Most sources of arguments in this portfolio will be based on the compilation of discussions from numerous lectures and seminars, literatures and past thesis works in the 2014-2015 academic session of African Studies program. It is my intention to discuss reason for the scramble of Africa, the arguable benefits and improvement it brought to the African people and the continent at large. Finally I will deliberate and argue on how the African scholars have chosen to hide behind the blame game of the colonist being totally responsible for Africa's underdevelopment even after over fifty years of independence. The disposition of this portfolio from chapter one will be about Africa in the pre-colonial and colonial era. Chapter two will discuss independence in Africa and chapter three will discuss underdevelopment and the way forward in Africa.

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1.1. The Invention of Africa and Africans

The term `Africa', one would wonder when and how it originated and became popular as being used to refer to a continent dominated by black people known today as Africans. Given the conceptual and definitive complexity of the term `Africa', disagreements and criticisms was raised when Mudimbe (1988) used the term `invention' in his book "The Invention of Africa" and Ranger (1983) in his influential essay "The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa", because the term `development' was a more acceptable alternative. According to Mudimbe (1988) Africa and Africans were invented, defined or conceptualized by non-Africans which of course are Westerners who stroke the favourable differences between Africa and Europe to remain dominant. More emphasis was laid by Said (2003) who argues that the Westerners' understanding and portrait of Africa is nothing near pleasant but rather of decadent, exotic and corrupt referring to Africa as monolithic region just like a country. The arguments against scholar such as Mbiti (1991) who views Africans as a people with one religion was well established by Said (2003) who thinks the cultural diversity and religions of the African people must be acknowledged.

With reference to the lecture by Lars Berge (2014, Sept. 2), I learned that although not all historians will agree on one common `original' meaning of Africa but it is certain to most that the term `Africa' became popularly used from the Roman era to refer to North Africa. It is pertinent to know that in the Roman era North Africa was synonymous with the Greek or Egyptian word "Libya" located in the South of the Mediterranean with Europe in the North-West and Asia in the East. Again, after the end of the first century Africa was being used as a collective term for the whole continent. Furthermore, it will be correct to say that Africa is a European imperial construct because overtime as the term was used and embraced; it gradually gained recognition in the world map as `Sub-Saharan Africa'.

There may have been possibilities of the initial separation of North Africa by the Arabs who instigated invasions in the seventeenth century, but it is also important to notice as well that in almost every literature today, there are evidences of the ideology that Africa being widely recognized was following the rise of modern Europe also known as Eurocentrism. The development of Eurocentrism of course for Africans spelt doom of the Atlantic slave trade which was the means through which millions of Africans were forcefully migrated to Europe and America; and the formation of African diasporas that made the name `Africa' very popular especially to the Portuguese while they were unspeakably racialized and dehumanized. This is the reason why Mudimbe (1988, p. 17) stated that the discovery of Africa in the fifteenth century "meant and still means the primary violence signified by the word. The slave trade narrated itself accordingly, and

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the same movement of reduction progressively guaranteed the gradual invasion of the continent". However, my argument against Mudimbe's statement is whether he had bluntly refused to acknowledge the substantial recorded events of cross-cultural business, slave trade and Africans in diaspora which have been in existence before the Atlantic trade initiated from Africa to the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.

In the mind of Said (2003), there is no possibility of the Orient or Africa to have existed outside Western imagination. In relation, Mudimbe (1988) bears his thoughts of the invention of Africa as a prophecy of self-fulfilment. Well whatever that might mean in Mudimbe's context, what I could deduce from both writers is that they are on the same page of telling the African history themselves. They think that Africans are the only people who can really tell their story without bias; hence they try to re-invent African history in their own ways. So far, I think Said and Mudimbe have really put lots of calculated efforts in attempt to expose the disguise and deceitful alliance of Western enlightenment and colonialism. According to Illife (1995), Said and Mudimbe went too far in stereotyping the West as unjust invaders of Africa, avoiding critiques of Africa's weaknesses because they (Africans) to some extents were also partakers of Western colonisation

The invention of Africa is not far from complex, knowing that there is no such thing as a straight forward history of any event or thing. Following some numbers of literatures and lectures, I think Africa could be defined as the interaction with eternal civilization as a result of its trace to the Berber origin and Greco-Roman ancestry. The origin of the term `Africa' has been quite uncertain whether it came from the Berber or Semite/Phoenician language of Greek lexicon. However it would be interesting to know if the Romans referred to the whole African content with the Latin word `Aprica' which was interpreted as `Sunny' or the possibility of the Greeks and Romans using same word `Aphrike' which meant `without cold'; and considering the Arabian word contribution of `Ifriqiya' given that the Arabs were very active in the invention of slave trade. In the lecture by Lars Berge (2014, Sept. 2) there was discussion of how black slaves and their descendants in North America became the first people or slave diasporas to recognise Africa as a whole which in the nineteenth century led to the formation of several One-Africa entities such as Pan-African Association, Pan-African Federation and so on around Europe and American.

Following the effects of slave trade and colonisation, there have been a lot of arguments amongst scholars till these current days about the best way to tell the history of Africa along with the description of the African people. Given the massive number of Black Africans who were taken to the West during slave trade and are now citizens, and also Europeans who have naturalized in some

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countries in Africa during the colonial periods, one would want to ask...who are the African people?

1.2. Who are the African People?

The arguments and debates between historians and scientists about the originality and definition of African people as a result of Western colonization have indeed been quite heatsed and complex. According to Cooper (1940), only the sub-Saharan region/South of the Sahara has a distinctive representation of African history and not the North, contrary to Iliffe (1995) who recognized and included both the North and south of the Sahara in his book. However, what caught my attention was that Iliffe assigned a separate chapter about South Africa in his book, why? Could it be that he did not fully recognise South Africa as part of Africa given the number and rate of white settlers and industrialization in that region? One similarity I noticed from both authors is that they included the Massive Indian Ocean Island of Madagascar as part of Africa, although they did not talk so much about it.

Further arguments have been raised by scholars who think that Africans in diaspora should be included in the history of Africa given the huge migration of Africans to the West (Europe and America) during slave trade. I am of the opinion that African people are the Blacks who existed and was first recognized by the Arabs before slavery, but today given the Eurocentric construct of the continent everyone who is born in Africa whether North, East, West, and South coast is an African. More importantly Africans in diaspora must be recognized and counted as part of African history. With reference to the class lecture on this topic by Lars Berge (2014, Sept. 2), history has it that most of the slaves that were traded to the West from Africa were Blacks.

That being said, would it be right to assume that all Blacks in the U.S.A. are Africans or AfricanAmerican? As a result of the wide spread of slavery, there are people in diaspora who go by the term Afro-Latino, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-European, and so on; are they also recognized as Africans? I have read about some Blacks in the U.S.A. who traced their ancestry to France, how can one address them...African-American or French-American? Again some people who are born into Caucasian family in the U.S.A., but whose parents were born in Africa, would it be right to say they are African-American? Matters become even more complicated these days where there are cases of two black couples procreating a pure white baby (not albino); well that may be a rare biological case of genetic disorder some people would argue.

My opinion to the above observation and questions for debate is that the effect of slavery and colonization may theoretically prove that people can no longer be judged by the colour of their skin,

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but is that the case in reality? Well, I still think that African-Americans are the descendant of the victims of slave trade who were born in the U.S.A., even if it would have been better to prefix a country instead of a continent, e.g. Nigerian-American. But come to think of it, what was the possibility to achieve that clarity when the slave masters intentionally abolished all ancestral linage of tribe, language and family to demoralize their slaves against any possible revolt (Lars Berge's lecture, 2014 Sept. 2). Furthermore, during the slave era there was strict prohibitions and in some cases death penalty to anyone who dares to educate these slaves on how to read and write let alone lecture them about their history; hence the history of the descendants was destroyed before they were born into slavery (Schwarz, 1831).

1.3. The scramble for Africa

The scramble for Africa which is also known as the partition or conquest of Africa is a term used to connote the invasion, occupation and subsequent colonization of the African territory and people by European imperial powers between 1876 and 1914. History has it that the scramble for Africa started with the interest of King Leopold II of Belgium to gain absolute pre-eminence over Congo and eventually other countries in Africa following a report he read in 1879 about the rich mineral resources in the Congo Basin which is presently known as Democratic Republic of Congo (Bourne, 1903). As an entrepreneur, he envisaged great business opportunity with substantial profits big enough to foster future economic development for Belgium. The King over some years secretly sent one of his officials called Henry Morton Stanley to go and explore the Congo basin and sign treaties with their Chiefs in the Congo River to gain sufficient grounds and form the Congo Free State in 1882. Following Stanley's feedback, King Leopold II formed an association under his jurisdiction known as International African Association to assume control over Congo basin in 1885 confiscating resources such as ivory and rubber (Peter, 1977).

According to the lecture by Lars Berge (2014 Sept. 12), I understood further that the 1884 Berlin Conference also occurred as a result of the request made by King Leopold II for international recognition of his personal property in the Congo. King Leopold II who was known for his brutality of the Congolese after much political power tussle in the conference won the case and was given recognition with further decree to other European powers to have effective occupation (economic development) of any country before international recognition will be issued (Bourne, 1903). As a result of the victory of King Leopold II and in order to avoid war among the European super powers in their quest to create wealth and further develop their economy, the full blown invasion of Africa began (Robinson, et. al. 1965, p. 175). In that era, having colonies were huge assets in terms of international exchange negotiations and balance of power and a source of increase in military

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soldiers in colonies where there is massive native population, hence rivalry amongst the European powers was inevitable.

During 1914 following the footsteps of the Belgian King and within forty years, African territory was finally invaded and divided amongst the European powers with Britain capturing Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa and the Gold Coast. Quite a vast area of West Africa was ceased and occupied by France including, Tunisia, Ivory Coast and Senegal (Pakenham, 1991). On the other hand, East African countries such as Tanzania and Namibia were controlled by the Germans, whereas Mozambique and Angola were subjugated by Portuguese. During and after the scramble for Africa, only Liberia and Ethiopia were left out as independent states. This was made possible because America had preoccupied Liberia at that time and Menelik II who was the Emperor of Ethiopia was smart enough to negotiate for weapons with his encroaching invaders such as the Italians, French and British in 1870 with the motive to instil confusion and rivalry against themselves as Italy ended up protecting Ethiopia when the war was imminent in 1889.

The scramble for Africa subsequently led to colonization that came with a lot of anomalies against the African tradition which prompted provocative and classic authors such as Rodney (1974) and Fanon (1961) with different perspectives of what really transpired during that era of colonization and what could be done to salvage Africa towards freedom or decolonization. Again colonization was made possible from the scramble for Africa because in the Berlin Conference, there was agreement amongst the European powers not to sell weapons and ammunition to any potential colonial regions in Africa in order to have the technological artillery advantage in terms of wars and demoralize Africans against any revolt or rebellion. The determination of the Europeans to extinct any rebellious African during the partitioning of Africa was well emphasized by Iliffe (1995, p.193) in his book `Africans: A history of a continent'.

My opinion to these historical events that obviously occurred before I was born would apply as an African and a scholar. First as an African I feel terrible knowing what was and has presently become of Africa. Africa may not have been technologically and economically developed compared to the intruding European nations, but they had their ways of governance, cultural practices and religions; and also to a large extent socio-political stability and peace. Perhaps if the Europeans did not invade Africa, there would not have been such word as `underdeveloped' because there would be no country or continent to compare Africa with and Africans would continue to leave their lives in contentment and isolation. However on the flip side of things, does that mean Africa did not benefit anything from the European invasion and colonization? My argument is whether Africans did not at least gain something they could re-build upon after independence regardless of what they

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